Spammers, who were until now pushing sexual performance and male enlargement pills, have switched to promoting pens, cheap jewelry and replica watches as the main products for sale, according to recent data from Marshal's TRACE security team, as reported by MarketWire on May 15, 2008.
Security researchers at Marshal's TRACE indicated that the switch over broke the two-year domination by health-related spam that earlier had been responsible for 75-80% of the total spam on the Internet. The trend for product spam instead of remedy or health spam shows the maturity and increased sophistication of the market for spam.
According to Vice President of Products at Marshal, Bradley Anstis, the inclination of spam towards products like software and jewelry hints for an increased understanding on the part of spammers about customers' buying pattern and their broad preference for certain products, as reported by ITBrief on May 15, 2008.
Marshal's security team also related that the proportion of medicinal spam campaigning herbal medicines and other pharmaceutical products has been replaced with items like replica watches, knock-off clothing tags and pirated software.
Since January 2008, the percentage of health spam has steadily declined from 80% to 45% while item spam has increased from 12-46%.
Meanwhile, the two types of spam together account for over 90% of the total spam circulating on the net. A group of prominent spammers is responsible for this changeover in spam. With the considerable number of botnets under the spammers' control, the latter is empowered to transform the global preference for spam.
Major botnets including the Mega-D, Pushdo and Srizbi are behind the present trend. These are being employed to distribute huge amounts of spam pushing replica products. Also, the items being spammed through the different botnets show an alarming rate of consistency.
Meanwhile, according to Marshal, it is distinctly evident that a group of unscrupulous operators is using these prominent botnets to spam their goods under brands including Exquisite Footwear, Prestige Replicas, Herbal King and Canadian Pharmacy.
The shift from health spam to product spam indicates that there is a growing appreciation by the spammers for consumers' trust in the products being popularized, concluded Marshal.
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